(no subject)

[wondershot.livejournal.com]

I said to my Russian friend today on ICQ:

меня мучит вселенкая лень.
("a general laziness torments me")

However, my friend corrected me, and told me to say мучает.

When I looked up мучать in the dictionary to figure out why I should use this verb instead of the other, it referred me to мучить. Multitran.ru didn't help either.

As far as I can tell, мучить isn't the perfective, so it can't be a modality thing. What's the beef here?

Comments

[gulidar.livejournal.com]

Well, i guess multitran fails here because it is right to write "мучить" which is just infinitive for "torture"(or torture someone - its "мучить" too), but in case its someone torturing someone else its "мучает".